


Cigarettes for love

by Loki_ate_my_pudding



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Cigarettes, Fights, Fluff and Angst, Underage Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-12 20:30:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15348132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loki_ate_my_pudding/pseuds/Loki_ate_my_pudding
Summary: Richie smokes. Eddie hates it.





	Cigarettes for love

**Author's Note:**

> Haven’t written in a while.

Richie got a paycheck once a month. $200 for working down the road at the shitty old gas station that he wished he could quit. 

$100 of his check got spent on things he did with his friend and his boyfriend. 

The other 100 found a comfortable spot right back in the cash register. Right in the cash register, after he buys himself more packs of the Marb blacks that rest in his pockets. 

Its sickeningly comforting to him, the feel of the cardboard box in his pocket, the small stick of tobacco that hangs from his lips when he worries about work while smoking. 

So he goes home with the pack and does school work. It’s the same every week. $10 a pack, three hours of homework, the pack’s gone, and his room smells like sickly tobacco that he knows Eddie hates. 

He buys another pack three hours later and smokes half of it on the roof at four AM, staring up at the stars before he knows they fade and the sun rises. He traces over self-made constellations of the same words , I love you , and wishes Eddie was beside him so he could repeat them to him. Richie gets himself tired then, early in the morning with nothing else to do but think, smoke, and watch the sky. 

So he sleeps and wonders if Eddie will come in the morning. 

His bed isn’t comfortable without Eddie. 

He wakes up and no one else is in the room, the smell of cigarette still there, not like he’d ever notice. It’s nose blindness, like in the Fabreeze commercials that play on the tv station his druggie dad always watches downstairs. They’d never notice the stench. They’re blind to it too. 

But Eddie isn't, and he texts Richie that he’ll be there and when he comes, Richie’s anxiously trying to spray his room with knock off room spray. Eddie knows what it means. 

“Please stop, Richie. It’s bad for you.” 

And richie says he will, but Eddie knows better. 

Eddie stays for the day, and the night, and in the morning when Richie wakes up, craving a cigarette, it takes everything he has to not slip out of the bed and smoke one because Eddie’s tucked under his arm in his biggest hoodie and looks softer than ever. 

He tells himself cigarettes can wait, and they do. He kisses Eddie’s hair until he wakes up and smiles. 

“I love you.” 

Richie repeats them, but he wishes he was on the roof at night with Eddie, repeating the words from the stars. It means more to him that way. 

Eddie leaves, and Richie’s mom comes home and talks to him about how his room is trashed and smells disgustingly floral, and he smokes the rest of the pack. 

He regrets it later when he goes to grab the box and there’s nothing left. 

Richie could buy more. Of course he could, there’s still $80 in his wallet in the Ciggy Supply Section, but he didn’t.

He didn’t because he watched Eddie eye these shoes at the mall the other day, shoes he knew he’d never be able to afford. He didn’t because if he spent the 80, he might not have enough to buy his love the shoes, and treat him to whatever else he wanted. 

Eddie comes over the next week, and Richie’s room doesn’t smell as Smokey as it usually does. He’s suspicious, he knew his boyfriend was one of Derry’s biggest chain smokers, and the lack of cigarettes in between his lips was rare. 

He’s suspicious until Richie gives him the shoes with a sheepish smile. “I saw you looking at them at the mall last month. Wanted to treat you to them.” 

And Eddie’s speechless. Not because Richie bought them, but because he trades cigarettes for love. 

Eddie stays over, and they climb into the roof at four am and Richie holds his hand tight and whispers the words in the stars, and Eddie’s happy. 

“I love you.” 

“I couldn’t live without you.” 

“You mean everything to me.” 

“I’d do anything for you.” 

Richie wasn’t lying. In the end, he’d always trade cigarettes for love. 

“I love you too, Chee. I’d do anything too.” 

(And if Eddie buys Richie cigarettes when he’s a little sad, no one has to know.)


End file.
